shrapnel in my pocket

Everything turns out well in the end. 

Or, at least, it turns out.

That has proven to be true of the Bank of Mexico's announcement that the 20-peso note would be withdrawn and replaced by an expanded supply of 20-peso coins. That announcement was four years ago (bienvenidos, benito -- y adiós). What has happened since?

Not much. The workhouse blue note featuring Benito Juarez face is still circulating, but very few 20-peso coins are. That has been my experience in our little backwater on the coast. I have received only one 20-peso coin in change.

This week I withdrew some pesos from my main bank. The bank seldom has any change. My wallet was filled with 500-peso notes that are not extremely easy to use at most businesses. The gas station. Hawaii (my preferred grocery store). A couple of high-end restaurants. Tour companies. That just about exhausts the list of places where a 500-peso note can be presented without feeling a bit ashamed that you are exhausting the resources of the business.

To avoid the awkwardness, I usually take my big bills to Banamex and change them into denominations that are a bit less-economically heretical. When my number finally popped up on the you-are-next screen, I asked the teller for a mix of notes. Twenties. Fifties. Hundreds. Two hundreds.

She started counting out the latter three in neat little piles. She then told me something I have been waiting to hear for four years. The bank did not have any 20-peso notes. Would I like coins, instead?

Because I like anything new, I took her up on her offer. Otherwise, I would not have had any 20s. The denomination is handy here -- even with Mexico's current inflation resulting in higher consumer price.

What I received is what you now see. I almost feel like a pirate having liberated Spanish doubloons from the Manila Galleon. Except the portrait is not of Carlos II, but a hero of the Mexican revolution -- Emiliano Zapata.

When I originally wrote about the note withdrawal, a Canadian acquaintance and an English friend shared their personal woes with the withdrawal of the 1- and 2-dollar notes, and the switch from paper to metal of the 1-pound note. Both bewailed the weight of the "shrapnel" in their pockets.

We Americans have had a couple of brief encounters with governments attempting to enforce a metal dollar on the public. The Eisenhower dollar in the early 70s. The Susan B. Anthony dollar in the late 70s. The Sacagawea and presidential dollars in the early 2000s.

None of them caught on with the public -- even when vending machines started dispensing them as change. They were either too large or too heavy. That is why Americans elected to stuff their wallets with one-dollar notes.

Of course, notes are becoming a vestige of the past almost everywhere in the world. Most commercial transactions are now conducted electronically. When I go north, I never use cash. I either use my credit card or the credit function on my FitBit. Before long, I will even forget which president (or other worthy) is on which note.

Even though credit card usage is far more common in the little villages where I have immigrated, most small business do not offer that option. This is a cash economy.

I suspect I will be memorizing the faces on the Mexican notes for some time. And Mexico will continue to do its part by printing a new series every five years or so. Or minting coins of ever-larger denominations.

As the old saying goes, it all spends the same.

the blind curing the blind

I am not a doctor -- though I have been known to play one in the courtroom.

That, of course was in a time long ago in Oregon. I now restrict my medical practice to me.

Writers have a tendency to ignore the aphorism omnes similitudines claudicante -- all analogies limp. But here comes one right now hobbling down the lane.

Our bodies are like cars. At least, mine is. As bodies age, we tend to think of them as eternally being what they were when they were new, and we are shocked -- shocked, I say -- when the suspension does not ease the bumps of life as it once did.

I am now in my eighth decade of life. And that means plenty of maintenance is required. Or needs to be ignored.

When I last was in Oregon, I received some bad, but hardly startling, news from an optometrist. My right eye was in the early stages of developing a cataract that would eventually need surgery -- and the blood vessels in my left eye were enflamed as the result of the elevated blood pressure I suffer whenever I visit the high desert.

Because it was more a precautionary warning than a matter of alarm, I tossed it onto the deferred maintenance list. After all, if I needed surgery, I could get some of the best care possible here in Mexico.

Until Sunday a week ago. While walking to church, I noticed what looked like a long strand of hair over the corner of my left eye. Even though I knew it was not an errant lock (I have not worn my hair that long in decades), I still brushed my hand to move it out of my range of sight. Not surprisingly, it was still there. And unless I had magically developed Mother Eyes, no hair on the front of my head was going to get in the way of my eyes.

A quick research on-line indicated the symptom could be the onset of macular degeneration or a detached retina. Both possibilities included the same warning: seek medical help immediately.

So, I did. On the next morning. But my doctor's waiting room was full, so I decided to use my time more productively by adding some more walking to my life.

And that is where everything stayed until Tuesday this week when I had dinner with my pastor and his wife (Al and Sue) at Papa Gallo's. I had noticed that whatever was wrong with my left eye was more apparent whenever I was in direct sunlight.

The conversation turned to matters medical, and I told them about my latest concern. When telling tales, I tend to use my hands for emphasis. Recreating my futile swipe to free what I thought was a non-existent tress, I felt something odd. A long hair. Not from the top of my head, but from the left corner of my eyebrow.

I did not have one of those exotic eye diseases that would require medical intervention. It was not even a strand of hair from my receding hairline. It was merely another one of those afflictions that seem to come to old men -- Andy Rooney eyebrows.

I have noticed that during the past year or two that my eyebrows have become the croplands for what can only be described as mutant eyebrow hairs. My eyebrows were the only bit of hair on my head that did not need any maintenance. They were always as orderly and uniform as the Queen's Life Guard.

Now, there are always several on the playing field that take off in any direction. The only thing they have in common is their horse-hair consistency and their absurd length. If my hairline recedes any further, I have the option of using my eyebrows as a comb-over.

When I discovered the genesis of my faulty left eye, I simply plucked out the offending hair. Al and Sue joined me in laughing at the absurdity of it all. I am just glad that I left the waiting room on Monday.

I was going to write that it would have been embarrassing if my doctor told me I was concerned about something that was just another Old Man problem. But I tend not to get embarrassed about anything these days. Another Old Man problem.

I suppose there are better roles for me on the stage of life than playing a doctor. Being an Andy Rooney impersonator may suit me far better.     

feliz día de la bandera

 Today is the day Mexico celebrates its flag. El día de la bandera.

 Flags have significance for every nation. They are the standards of national myth.

Take a look at that flag. Really look at it. What can you tell about the nation it represents?

Obviously, a monarchy. The crown is a dead give-away.

And the national creed is not subtle. Right in your face. Religion. Union. Independence.  All in a romance language.

It would be understandable if you thought you were looking at an early version of a flag from the Kingdom of Italy. But it's not.

It is the personal banner of the first ruler of the newly-independent Mexico: Emperor Agustín de Iturbide. The year was 1821.

And like the advocates of most authoritarian forms of government, Iturbide made the mistake of thinking the state was the nation. Something we see playing out in the mind of Vladamir Putin this morning.
  

But Iturbide's banner was never the official flag of Mexico. That honor goes to this beauty:

That flag looks far more familiar to us.  With a few design changes, it is the same flag we see in front of every government building in Mexico.  And it is replete with additional myths. Including that crown on the eagle.

The colors are a good place to start.  Many of the leaders of the Mexican independence movement admired the French revolution.  Choosing a tricolor design was easy.  Just substitute Mexican green for French blue, and you have the basic flag. The French, of course, tried to return the favor in 1864. Not by removing the green, but by installing a European emporer.

Being romantics, the heroes of Independence ascribed qualities to the colors.  Green for independence.  White for religion -- Roman Catholic, of course.  (The anti-clericalism of the Mexican elite did not attain dominance until the reforma thirty years later).  And red for the union between Mexico's people.

The coat of arms in the center embodies the mysticism of Mexican myth.  The story goes, sometime in the early 1300s, the Mexica people (one of the component parts of what would one day be the Aztec Empire) were on the move searching for a permanent home.  They believed their god, Huitzilopochtli, would provide a homesteading sign: an eagle perched on a prickly pear cactus while eating a snake.

Mexico has eagles, snakes, and cactus galore.  So, the housing options seemed open-ended.  But, Huitzilopochtli must have had a good sense of humor.

Instead of an eagle showing up in the rolling hills of central Mexico, the designated eagle landed on a cactus on a small, swampy island in the middle of a lake.  An island that would be the root of a vast empire -- until the Spanish showed up and decided the spot would be a far better site for the capital city of their new colonial empire.

Thus was born the eagle myth.  Along with a national coat of arms and matching flag decoration.

The first eagle wore a crown.  Just like the emperor.  But the crown and Iturbide were not to last for long.  Both were sent packing in 1823. At least the eagle wasn't shot by a firing squad -- as was the emperor. In 1824.

The crownless republican eagle ruled until the French decided Mexico needed an Austrian prince to be the next emperor of Mexico.  The Aztec eagle turned into a Roman finial, accompanied by imperial eagles sprinkled on the tricolor in a style only a Napoleon could love.

The only retained Mexican influence was the tricolor itself.

There were other reasons, but no self-respecting Mexican was going to allow his country to be represented by what looked like a tea towel purchased at a shop outside Neuschwanstein Castle.  Out it went in 1867 along with Maximilian's bullet-riddled body. European emperors have not had a long shelf-life in Mexico.

The crownless-eagle returned for another 26 years, until the eagle got tired of facing to the right.  For 23 years, he switched profiles and faced to the left. Staring in the same direction can get boring.

When the revolution toppled the dictator Porfirio Diaz in 1911, Mexico decided it needed a new flag to represent its revolutionary fervor.  Instead of the eagle's head being in profile, the whole bird would be in profile with a more natural look.  Heroic.  Audubon as socialist realism.

That was 1916.  With a slight change in 1934, it was the national flag until 1968.  The flag I knew when I made my first trip to Mexico.

And then the Olympic games came to Mexico in 1968.  Mexico spiffed and buffed,  making Mexico City shine.  (With the exception of some students who bothered to get in the way of a government born of revolution, who knew how to disgracefully tend to protests -- promises kept, part i.)

Mexico got a lot of new buildings for the games.  But it also got a new flag -- the flag we see today.

 

All of the myths and symbols have been retained since independence -- even though the colors have new meanings: green for hope; white for union; red for the blood of heroes. After all, this is a flag that represents the principles of the Revolution, but that has its roots in a misty past where Spaniards had not yet invaded the land.

Like most nations, Mexico thinks very highly of its symbols.  The flag is the embodiment of the nation.  Every morning at schools across Mexico, children parade it, salute it, and pledge their sacred honor to it.

Even this post could be subject to Mexican law because images of the flag are protected.

Anyone who broadcasts an image of the flag is required to have a permit.  Some of us remember the dust-up caused when MTV Mexico canceled an episode of South Park because the program featured a Mexican flag -- and the government had not issued a permit.

You will not see protesters burning Mexican flags in Mexico -- and getting away with it.  I suspect that Austrian-inspired table cloth could be burned.  But I am not even certain about that.

To postmodern eyes, a lot of that seems odd.  But, Mexicans love their flag because they love their country.

So, today we will wish the flag, and the nation for which it stands, a Happy Flag Day. May the eagle remain uncrowned.

me talk pretty one day

Last month I met a northern tourist perusing a menu in Spanish in front of one of Barra de Navidad’s small eateries. He said he was too old to learn anything beyond menu Spanish, but he was rather proud about what he had learned over the years.

“It took me some time, but someone finally clarified the difference between ‘cerdo’ and ‘puerco’ for me. ‘Cerdo’ is ‘beef’ and ‘puerco’ is ‘bacon.’"

I laughed thinking it was the opening gambit of an ironic raconteur. It wasn’t. Someone had undoubtedly pulled a linguistic practical joke on him. And it had stuck. Several of my acquaintances have peppered my Spanish vocabulary with suggestions that would not be appropriate for the Mexican equivalent of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

I suspect the malapropisms were inflicted on him, but, in learning a new language, we often inflict them on ourselves.

A couple years ago, a reader asked me to meet him for coffee at Rooster's in San Patricio Melaque. When the waiter asked him what he would like to drink, he responded: "Una bruja sin leche." The waiter asked him to repeat his order. He did. He obviously wanted something with milk, but we were certain he did not want a "bruja."

I asked him what he wanted. He seemed amazed we did not understand. "Una bruja. A coffee."

Then the centavo dropped. I knew he periodically patronized a pleasant coffee shop in Barra de Navidad cleverly-named "La Bruja." One of those Spanglish puns that cause us to chuckle. "Bruja" means "witch," but in English it sounds like another word for "coffee" -- "brew." 

I am hardly blameless when it comes to speaking Spanish. After all, I am the guy who asked our local postal clerk if the box rental was for a full year ("año"), but inadvertently used the far more humorous "ano."

When I back myself into a linguistic corner (and I do that far too often), I extricate myself by opting for the present tense of a verb and then tossing in "en el pasado" (in the past) to create the past tense or "en el futuro" for the future. The preterit can fend for itself.

It was not supposed to be like this.

I once had a dream.

The first thing I did when I decided to retire to Mexico (before I read any of the books on why Mexico was the perfect retirement home or chose an area to live or calculated all of the money I was going to save), I bought as many language programs and books I could find.

Here is the dream part.

• I was going to read Don Quixote in the original and then discuss with my Mexican neighbors whether Cervantes wrote a sardonic satire about knightly valor or if the novel was nothing more than the romantic wisp we have made of it.
• Or I would have long discussions in the street about the theological strengths and weaknesses of trinitarianism, dualism, and the inevitable elements of gnosticism.
• Or just be satisfied to banter about the subtleties of Mexican politics with the people who have the power to choose their leaders. 

If you have been following Mexpatriate over the past fifteen years, you know the spirit was willing, but the outcome has been well -- wanting.

I have now attended Spanish lessons with five different teachers. I studied. I participated in class. I did my homework. I invested a good deal of my sarcastic academic soul. I have a Duolingo learning streak of almost 2000 days. And the result?

After all that, I know Maria lives in a pretty apartment, that she is learning Spanish in Guatemala, and, if I caught the words correctly, she lost her green fountain pen in the baked duck. Just don't ask me for directions to the bathroom.

I am fine with situations where the parameters are controlled and I can pre-script my lines. Steve in a restaurant. Steve at the grocery store. Steve discussing his pet with his friends. That sort of thing. 

Caught unawares, my Spanish is not just bad, it is dreadful. The best I can say is that I plow through it with the finesse of three-year old using scissors on his mother's fur coat.

I stole the title of this essay from David Sedaris. In "Me Talk Pretty One Day," he humorously recounts his tortured attempts to learn French at a language school in Paris. His teacher was one of those martinets who believed students could not learn unless they were first humiliated.

After one of her more demeaning sessions, the students gathered to discuss how they cried themselves to sleep at night because of the teacher. But, one student, placing hope before personal experience, declared:

That is common for me also, but be more strong, you. Much work, and someday you talk pretty. People stop hate you soon. Maybe tomorrow, okay?

Anyone who has ever tried to learn a new language and then use it with fellow neophytes can appreciate that paragraph.

Can I say there is any hope "me talk pretty one day" in Spanish? With any certainty?

Of course not. I will continue my daily studies and I will inflict my dreadful Spanish on my very patient and indulgent neighbors. Will we discuss Cervantes, the finer points of theology, or the subtext of the AMLO administration? Definitely not.

At least, I can now claim I am far enough in my studies to tell my bruja from my ano.

scorpion season?

Last week a northern visitor posted a photograph of a scorpion on one of our local Facebook pages and asked if it was poisonous.
 
Because there is always one in every crowd, a self-appointed grammarian pointed out that scorpions are not poisonous; they are venomous. He then answered the question.

A couple of the comments included an interesting phrase. At least, it was interesting to me because I had never considered it. The phrase? "It is scorpion season."

Scorpion season. I didn't know there was one. I had always imagined scorpion visits to be merely transactional -- like being visited by the plague or politicians selling life insurance policies.

One of the useful things about writing periodic essays is that the archives can be an understudy diary. I write about enough daily occurrences that I should be able to determine if certain phenomena happen in discernible patterns. Such as, is there a scorpion season.

Using the search function (up there in the left corner of the page), I discovered a baker's dozen of essays dealing with my past scorpion encounters: December 2009, April 2010, March 2011, July 2011, June 2012, January 2016, April 2017, May 2018, June 2018, August 2018, December 2019, October 2020, and August 2021.

I draw two conclusions from those dates. One, scorpions can show up any time of year (though summer seems to be the season with the most sightings). Two, I write about scorpions far too often.

I can now add February to that list. As I came out of my bedroom onto the patio this morning, I almost stepped on this beauty.

He would have been easy to miss because he was one of the tiniest scorpions I have seen. A mere lad setting forth in the world. But he was fully armed with his venomous tail to kill prey or to defend himself against the Brobdingnagian giants his mother warned him about.

Rather than kill him, I scooped him up and took him across the street to the lot where the chickens hand out. Chickens consider scorpions to be delicacies. In effect, I entered the scorpion in the Gallinaceous Hunger Games. I am not certain I did him a favor.

Under normal circumstances, my initial encounter with the scorpion could have gone bad for both of us. I usually walk across that stretch of patio barefoot. But it was also a reminder that when I clean out the planters with my bare hands, his siblings could be hiding amongst the detritus. 

Worrying about scorpions here is a bit like obsessing about yellow jackets in Oregon. They are just there as part of the natural background.

Will the encounter help remind me to wear sandals when trotting across the patio or to wear gloves while picking up fallen leaves and flowers? I would like to say yes. But I will not lie to you. It won't. I will always do what is convenient for me at the moment.

Just as my encounters with scorpions are transactional, the manner in which I deal with such dangers are merely part of life's static.

Life is too short to worry about the things that go bump (or sting) in the night.
  

the tax man cometh -- and, boy, is he old

When I moved to Mexico, I knew several things in my life would need to change -- or. at least, be more flexible.

One thing that would not change would be filing my annual income tax return.

Since the early 1990s, I have used Quicken (to track my income and expenses) and its cousin TurboTax (to file my income taxes). Over the past thirty years, both software programs have changed -- mostly for the better. Every December, I would purchase a new TurboTax disc at Costco in December. Because the nearest Costco to San Patricio Melaque was a four-hour drive away, I was not certain how I would file my taxes from Mexico.

TurboTax solved the problem for me. Just before I moved to Mexico, the company started offering its tax preparation services online. I was no longer tied to buying a new disc each year. Instead, I paid for the service each year when I filed my return.

My tax situation has not been very complex since I retired. It could have been very different.

I had initially planned to review contracts on a part-time basis for my former employer, but the fiscal and legal details of the plan turned out to be more difficult than anticipated. That made my taxes far easier to calculate without dealing with the problems of income earned outside of the United States and the impact that could have on my tax liabilities to the Mexican government.

Since 2009, my income tax form usually constitutes twenty-some pages with some rather arcane tables and schedules. TurboTax proved to be a very good advisor. So, there was no question that I would use its services again this tax year -- even though my particular taxable events were greatly reduced.

I received my last income document yesterday afternoon, and started the most important tax task -- pulling together all of my paperwork into two stacks. Five documents in the income pile. Eleven in the potential deductions pile.

Because I had filed with TurboTax last year, all of my personal information was pre-loaded. The program imported my income information from the original sites. It then walked me through the steps to determine if I should use a standardized deduction. Even though I paid property taxes, registered my car, and made some charitable contributions, TurboTax recommended that I take the standard deduction. So, I did.

With a quick review, my payment of a filing fee, and the punch of a button, my federal tax return was filed. And it took no more than 41 minutes from start to finish.

It was not until I printed out my return that I noticed that TurboTax had chosen a new Internal Review Service form for my filing -- a Form 1040-SR. Euphemistically entitled "U.S. Tax Return for Seniors." It is a four-page form that replaces the old 1040-EZ (simple form) with a twist. The font size is large enough to allow it to be read on the opposite side of a football field. And my eyes appreciate the gesture.

I will confess, though, that I was a bit startled to see the "for Seniors" title. My aunt once told me: "You realize you're old when the grocery clerk asks you if you want the senior discount."

That has not yet happened to me. But I think I had the same reaction when TurboTax automatically opted for the "Senior" form.

Now that my tax situation is simple enough for this new form, I did a little digging. If my tax situation remains unchanged, I wondered if it might now be just as simple to use the online IRS form to file, instead of TurboTax?

The IRS adds enough warnings to its site to scare away anyone who has doubts about using the online service.

• The form cannot be used after 22 October of the filing year.
• The site does not provide guidance about which form to use.
• The site does not provide assistance with individual tax situations.
• It does not provide an error-checking service.
• The form will perform only basic calculations.
• It can only be used for federal filings for the current tax year.
• No state tax returns are available.
• No changes can be made once the return has been submitted.       

None of that is a big concern to me. Now that I have been dumped into the geezer camp, I can use the simplest of forms. Of course, if I choose the IRS option, all I will save is the pittance I pay to TurboTax to get the services I cannot get from the IRS.*

What a brave new world the IRS has provided to us -- to ease the pain of watching our hard-earned dollars (for me, it is the largest item in my budget) being transformed into governmental services and related cronyism.

It makes me wonder why I even included "tax-filing" on my lists of potential problems when I moved here. It certainly has not proven to be an issue.


* -- For taxpayers with an annual income less than $73,000, the IRS provides another service (IRS Free File Partners) that offers more tax preparation assistance -- as well as state tax filing. 
  

is food bought on a road trip -- road kill?

There was a day (back in the misty days of 2009) when I would drive to Manzanillo each week.

To pick up the mail at Mailboxes, Etc and to shop for food items I could not find in San Patricio Melaque.

No more. I can now get everything I need and almost everything I want in town simply by driving over to Hawaii. 

There is another reason I do not drive to Manzanillo much any more. I dislike the drive. If I am flying solo (which I usually am), I just want to get there and back home as quickly as I can. I spend more time driving than I do in the stores.

I now go to The Little Apple for only two reasons: 1) when I have dry cleaning and 2) to stop at the recently-renovated La Comer to find some sort of exotic food to ramp up my dinners.

Yesterday, I did both. After I picked up my holiday dry cleaning that I had dropped off three weeks ago, I stopped at La Comer where I have developed a shopping strategy. Produce to pasta to tea to frozen meat to cheese display. In and out. 15minutes max.

It was a good day. I scored with an English cucumber, some Sencha and Genmai Cha, a package each of bucatini and orzo (both from Rummo), and a wedge of imported Enmental. But the greatest score of all was amongst the frozen meat. It is featured at the top. 

Un conejo. A rabbit.

Packaged as it is, folded over on itself, it was not easy to identify. I learned to appreciate good rabbit and hare when I lived in England in the mid-1970s. The meat and game market in Oxford offered almost anything that hopped, flew, grunted, or rooted. It was easier to see what you were buying because the mammals and birds were still wearing their natural coverings.

Well, some were. Many of the rabbits were skinned and splayed in display cases. Looking a bit like a Peterbald. (I will kindly forego photographs of the market for those of you of a squeamish nature. For the same reason, I will skip a photograph of a living Peterbald.)

Now, that the rabbit is tucked away in the freezer, I need to come up with an appropriate use for its sacrifice. I will undoubtedly start by roasting it. A wire hanger over an open fire would add a rustic flare, but I suspect I will stick with the oven.

And then, what? Right now, I am leaning toward a rabbit risotto. But that will have to wait until I return from my trip to Yucatan wit my cousins Dan and Patty.

To tide me over, I bought a dozen take-out pieces of one of my guilty pleasures in Manzanillo. Monkey's chicken. The piquante version. In this case, it was the muy piquante version. And well-appreciated. If your chicken does not make your nose run, it died in vain. This one was put to a glorious purpose. 

Omar will stop by the house tonight on his weekend visit to Barra de Navidad. He is now at university (with in-person classes) in Autlan. He had best hurry, though, because I have cut a wide swath through yesterday's purchase.

Even though I dislike the drive, this particular trip proved to be quite successful.